For the past year we’ve been hard at work conceptualizing a new brand to more clearly define who we are and what we do. Working with our Board of Directors and the wonderful creative team at Brandworks, who volunteered hours of their valuable time to this effort, we spent several months developing our new name and logo.
MediaSmarts has partnered with the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) to develop the Online Commerce Cyber Security Consumer Tip Sheet – the fourth in a series of tip sheets on cyber security issues.
It is with sadness we note the passing on August 26 of Jacques Bensimon, a great champion for Canadian film and television. A gifted arts administrator and filmmaker, Jacques leaves a large legacy through his many contributions to Canada’s cultural life.
As we come to the end of 2012, we reflect on the busy and exciting year that just passed. We’re ending the year with a new name, new logo, and new website, but with the same dedication to supporting adults in helping raise a generation of media savvy youth!
Not only was 2012 a year of rebranding and change, we were also very busy at work updating our resources and creating brand new lesson plans. We released 21 new and updated lessons on a variety of topics from bias and crime in the media to free speech and the internet and challenging hate online.
Like it or not, if you use the Internet you have an online identity. Some people call this your "brand." What's a brand?
In the early months of 2011, the eyes of the world were on the Middle East, watching as the governments of Egypt, Tunisia and other autocratic regimes buckled under the pressure of democratic protest. Among those watching were a group of elementary students in northern Canada, who were able to watch a live Twitter feed of the protestors and other citizens of the region reporting what was happening. Despite their geographical isolation, these students were connected to events happening halfway around the world, thanks to the efforts of their teacher to bring digital media into the classroom.
The new movie Zero Dark Thirty, which tells the story of the tracking and eventual killing of Osama Bin Laden, has received several Oscar nominations (including Best Picture), but it's attracting another kind of attention as well: several writers, including Jane Meyer at The New Yorker and Peter Maass at The Atlantic, have accused it of condoning or even glorifying the use of torture by US intelligence agencies.
Despite what many adults believe privacy matters to youth. More and more, though, youth are finding that their actions online are monitored – by parents, teachers, and corporations. A high school principal creates a fake Facebook profile page and adds over 300 of her school’s students as friends; a Texas middle-school plans to introduce ID cards with microchips that its students will be required to carry at all times; an Indiana high school student is expelled after a profane tweet (sent in the middle of the night from the student’s home computer) alerts his school’s monitoring system.
There's an old urban legend called “the water engine,” which tells of the discovery of a way to turn water into fuel. There are variations to the story – sometimes it's tap water, sometimes sea water; in recent versions it's specified the fuel is nonpolluting – but the ending is always the same: the invention is suppressed by the oil companies, either by buying the invention and burying it or by forcing the inventor into ruin and suicide.